


Of Androids and Otters

by TrekInTandem



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Androids, Domestic Disputes, F/M, Femdom, Fluff and Smut, Foursome [implied], Handcuffs, Home is a Person, Humor, Idiots in Love, It's River's birthday-again, Marilyn Monroe [mentioned], Multi, Otters, Roleplay [referenced], Stephen Fry [mentioned], Threesome - F/M/M, in other words, just a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:43:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18728215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrekInTandem/pseuds/TrekInTandem
Summary: “Well, look, River, we really shouldn’t keep crossing timelines and risking the disintegration of reality all the time just for—for—and I know how much you like that, and it’s your birthday and what do you get the woman who has all of time and space at her fingertips, and here’s something she doesn’t already have two of, I thought . . .""I've dated androids. They're rubbish."- River Song, "Silence in the Library""Unless there's two of them.""Now, that's a whole different birthday."- Rory and River Song, "A Good Man Goes to War""So, I may have accidentally invented a boyfriend.""Yeah, I did that once. And there's no easy way to get rid of an android."- Clara and the Doctor, "The Time of the Doctor""I lived among otters once for a month! Well, I *sulked*. River and I, we had this big fight--"- The Doctor, "The Caretaker"(I regret nothing.)





	1. Androids

Pinned by the skeptically raised eyebrow and dubious gaze of River Song, the Doctor was on the verge of wittering.

“Well, look, River, we really _shouldn’t_ keep crossing timelines and risking the disintegration of reality all the time just for—for—and I know how much you like that, and it’s your birthday and what do you get the woman who has all of time and space at her fingertips, and here’s something she doesn’t already have two of, I thought, not all the time anyway. I made it myself, you know.” The last was said a bit indignantly, but now he was already grinning enthusiastically as he clapped his hands. “Just think, River! All of the fun, no waiting, no calculating the timestreams, and none of the dire threat of universe implosion.”

River huffed. “Oh, really. Dire threat, indeed. We’re always careful and we don’t do it _that_ often. Only ever on my birthday.”

“Well, yes,” he allowed, “but how many birthdays have you _had_ this year?”

He was absolutely adorable, she thought, with those wryly amused eyes and crooked little smile, a face one part teasing and two parts fond indulgence and yet another part self-deprecating awareness that he was hopelessly besotted and loved every moment of it.

“Shut up,” she said, tucking away a smile just well enough for him to see she was doing it. “I’m only making up the ones I skipped.”

“Of course,” he said with a straight face, slipping his hands onto her waist.  She rested her arms on his, her hands lightly holding his forearms. “Do you really not like it?”

She looked over his shoulder at her gift. “I didn’t say that.”

“I spent quite a lot of time on it, you know. Exact in every detail. The TARDIS helped.”

“Very realistic,” River acknowledged.

“And fully functional,” her gift said, looking back at her and needlessly straightening his bow tie in a familiar preening gesture as he rocked on his toes.

The android Doctor winked at her cheekily.

“Hush, you,” the Doctor said, half-turning and shooting the droid a scowl.

“Well, I imagine _so_ ,” River told the droid before giving the Doctor a look of amusement, primarily at his discomfiture, he was sure. He cleared his throat embarrassedly. “He’s a lovely present, sweetie,” River said kindly. “Thank you.”

The droid Doctor beamed proudly and tweaked his lapels.

The Doctor let her go and turned to his creation with a critical eye so that they stood side by side staring at the droid. “Really? Because you seemed a little, ah, shocked. Didn’t expect that. I mean you’re a 51st century girl—mostly.” He muttered, “At least in this,” under his breath before going on. “And you said you’d dated androids before.”

River turned from her appraisal of the droid to look up at him. “Did I?”

His head whipped around to her and his mouth opened slightly and closed again before he said, “Damn.”

Then: “River!”

“What?” she asked innocently and with an appropriate hint of pique at the accusation in his tone.

“If that was a spoiler, it means you haven’t done it yet,” he sputtered.

“And?”

“River!”

She placed a calming palm on his chest in response to the wounded face he was giving her. “I might have been lying,” she said soothingly. “Or who knows what and why. Whatever the case, you know it wouldn’t _matter_.” Her face turned sly and teasing. “No more than _Marilyn_.”

“It wasn’t a real chapel,” he huffed automatically.

“So you say,” she said lightly, turning back to the droid.

“Stephen Fry,” the Doctor said, also looking at the droid.

“It was a _bet_.”

“You say that like it means you didn’t have a choice.”

“Well, and I didn’t, did I? A bet is just a dare with money involved.”

He sighed in exaggerated exasperation at this attitude toward dares and then chuckled. “I believe he’s still trying to work through the implications in therapy.”

River clicked her tongue. “Twentieth-century humans. So binary.”

The droid smirked at her. “You, on the other hand, are very flexible.” He chucked his head at the Doctor. “At least that’s what he said.”

River shot a grin at the Doctor as she walked over to the droid. “I _bet_ he did,” she purred, voice loaded with innuendo and smug amusement. She circled behind the droid and he half-turned one way and then the other to keep his eyes on her.

When her gaze found the Doctor again, he looked completely unrepentant despite her teasing. “Well,” she said, looking back to the droid, “would you like to find out?”

The droid turned to face her fully and the Doctor smirked at her over his shoulder.  The sight of himself fixating on River Song as if the rest of the universe didn’t exist never failed to strike a deep chord of rightness and amusement and elation and lust in him.  Turned out it was just the same even when it wasn’t _really_ him, and he congratulated himself on a job well and properly done.

“Oh, yes,” the droid told River. “It’s my reason for being.”

River hummed, a sound full of both suppressed laughter and something else, something that told the Doctor those words, mawkish as they could have seemed, had gotten to her in the most delicious way, and ran her fingers lightly down the buttons of the droid’s shirt.

“Not _just_ yours,” she murmured cheekily, eyeing the Doctor again. He was wearing his I’m-yours-and-I-know-it-and-oh-but-I- _love_ -it face again.  He rocked on his toes and smiled back at her.

“Exact in every detail I said,” he told her wryly, confessing it readily, as he moved up behind the droid in response to the invitation in her face.

Slipping an arm around the droid’s waist, she shifted him to her side so she could step forward and reach her other arm around the Doctor and draw him into a kiss.

Before she closed her eyes, she saw both him and the droid lifting their arms to each other’s shoulders to give the other more room, each quite naturally accommodating the other, just as the Doctor always did with himself when there were two of him.

The Doctor’s hand found its way into her hair immediately as their lips met, his fingers sliding against her scalp to draw her into him as they kissed even though she was there already and certainly not going anywhere, expressing a need and desire for her nearness that had nothing to do with logic or even bodies, really, a need that was as seductive all on its own as his mouth on hers was.

The droid’s arm had slipped around her back to make room for hers around him, and almost as soon as the Doctor’s hand slid into her hair, the droid’s fingers were toying with the ends of her curls.

For long moments, she and the Doctor reveled in just the simple movement of mouth playing against mouth. Later there would be tongues to probe and catch and chase, but for now, this alone was utterly compelling.

River felt the droid’s face nuzzle first against her hair and then against the side of her face, and she moved a caressing hand onto his back beneath his jacket as she pulled the Doctor in closer, tilting her head back so they needn’t separate their mouths as she brought his hips against hers.

Her right hip grazed the droid’s front as she moved into the Doctor, and he was hard, fully erect already, and so was the Doctor, she felt, as their bodies met.   _Oh my._

With a hum of pleasure in her throat, she pulled her mouth from the Doctor’s and palmed both their arses, tugging them sharply against her, their hard lengths pressing into her stomach and hip. She didn’t miss the way their hands suddenly grabbed at each other’s shoulders and clenched there as she pressed them against her body.

“The highest commendation to your programming, sweetie,” she husked, licking the taste of him from her bottom lip.

“Happy birthday, wife,” he said happily. 

He was still against her, for the moment, but the droid began nudging himself absently against her hip, though he seemed unaware of it when she turned to him and found him watching her attentively.

“Let’s give you a test drive, then, shall we?”  And she brought her hand up to his cheek and lifted her mouth to his.

He _whimpered_ as their lips met and the fingers that had been playing with her hair became a fist clutching the back of her shirt.

River gasped from the thrill of arousal that shot through her at that even as the Doctor said, “Ah, River, you probably ought to know . . .”

He trailed off and she tore her mouth from the hungry one on hers to give him a questioning look. The droid grasped needfully at her back and dropped his head to press his face into her neck, mouthing at her skin.

“It’s his first time,” the Doctor said with a little smirk.

River lifted her brows.

“Not just because he’s new. _Really_ his first time in every possible way. I thought you’d like that. He’s going to react like a me you’re touching for the first time.” His cheeks flushed a bit, heated with something that was definitely not embarrassment—or not just embarrassment. River’s eyes had darkened at his words and he knew she did indeed like the special twist he’d added to his gift. “So, you know, he might not, uh, be able to, ah, _maintain_. Thought you ought to know.” He leaned in and spoke heatedly against her ear. “I want to be sure you get everything you want tonight, wife.”

Indeed the droid was trembling even now. River made a sound in her throat that was very nearly a growl and yanked the Doctor into another kiss, sweeping her tongue into his mouth this time.  She released him just as abruptly. “Oh, I _will_. Starting _now_. First, bed. A big, big bed. Both of you on it.”


	2. &

With a sigh, the Doctor at last accepted that the TARDIS was not going to let him turn her exterior into a giant sandcastle (just think, a sandcastle you could go _inside_!), not even for a day to visit Space Florida, not even if he compromised by making the sand blue or the castle police box-shaped, and stuck the wires he’d been fiddling with back into their original spot (well, roughly).  He took off his goggles and rubbed the pinched skin where they’d been pressing into his face. He could swear they’d been getting _discouragingly_ smaller while he worked.

Well, then, what next?

Ah, yes, River was here, wasn’t she?

She’d come in earlier when he’d been too busy (obsessed) to break his focus to do more than mutter a “Be with you in a minute, dear” at her.

He went off to find her, trying to remember what it was she’d said for some clue as to where she might be now.

He wasn’t successful, but even clueless, he finally found her in their bedroom.

“River,” he sputtered, “what are you doing??”

The droid Doctor was handcuffed to the bed and River had a knee on either side of his hips and his cock, obviously, deep inside her.

She slowed her pace and turned to give him her _Seriously, sweetie?_ eyebrow over one shoulder.

“Without me?” he demanded in the most offended and wounded tones he could muster, stripping off his bow tie.

“I _did_ invite you.”

“You didn’t!”

“I most certainly did. You weren’t listening.”

Well, all right, fair’s fair—that was entirely possible. “But you’ve _handcuffed_ him.” River’s handcuffs were for _him_.

River gave him another eloquent look.  Then, she shrugged and blithely tossed off, “He consented, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Of course he did,” he grumbled.  “He does everything you ask. He even agrees with everything you say since you reprogrammed him. He’s particularly loquacious on the wonders of archaeology.”

River’s face sparkled with mischief and amusement, and—he couldn’t help but note—her hips began to roll a bit faster again. “Drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Gotcha,” she said happily, grinning.

Before he could untangle his foot from his trousers and reply, he lost her attention as the droid leaned forward, taxing his shoulders to the max to reach, the Doctor knew, having been in the same position more than once, and mouthed at her breast, taking the nipple into his mouth and causing River to turn back to him with a moan and begin to ride him more urgently, with undeniable intent.  When she did, the droid Doctor fell back onto the pillows and began to thrust his hips up to meet hers.

That moan—he knew that moan. She was close. She was going to climax before he could get his clothes off and get onto the bed. “Hey—no, no, no—wait for me,” he protested.

“Hurry,” she bit out, eyes closed and head thrown back.

Naked at last, he scrambled onto the bed and clambered over the droid Doctor’s legs as River began to make those little short involuntary cries in the back of her throat that meant her climax was building. He knelt behind her and moved her hair aside and was just leaning down to kiss her neck and reaching a hand around toward her breast when she pressed her head back against his shoulder with a long delicious groan.

He froze with his lips still puckered to kiss and then sighed loudly. “Well, really,” he said, letting his now kissless mouth drop onto her shoulder—but wrapping his arms around her waist anyway.

River didn’t respond as the droid Doctor was still thrusting into her, rather furiously now. She began to keen and buck in the Doctor’s arms.

“Yes, oh, yes,” she breathed, and the Doctor felt her arm brush his as she reached down between her legs.

Even mildly annoyed as he was (okay, any annoyance was all but gone), this was all still indecently sexy, and he shifted his hands to her hips and pressed her back against him so the force of the droid’s thrusts pushed her arse against his rapidly growing erection.

He wriggled his hips into the sensation and moved one hand up to her breast as his duplicate came inside his wife.

“ _Doctor_ , oh, _honey_ ,” River hummed, momentarily going rigid again and then leaning forward, her breast suddenly feeling delightfully fuller and heavier in his hand (he spread his fingers and lightly pinched the nipple between them), as she circled her hips decadently over her own fingers and the cock inside her and wrung every bit of pleasure out of her latest orgasm.

The Doctor was quite sure she was talking to the droid. Well, _really_. He might as well have not even _been_ here.

River rose back up on her knees, lifted one, and then tumbled off the droid to one side, and the Doctor sat back on his heels between the droid’s feet.

He crossed his arms and frowned at his sex-tousled wife. “Why _did_ you invite me, anyway?”

Mid luxurious stretch, River opened her eyes and stared at him.  After a moment’s consideration, she released the stretch and sank bonelessly back against the bed. “Sweetie, are you . . . you’re not actually _jealous_ , are you?”

He pressed his lips against his teeth and said nothing.

“You _are!_ ” she said with some delight, sitting up and then uncuffing the droid with a key that the Doctor would have said had come out of her sleeve, had she been wearing any. Released, the droid turned onto his side and curled around one of the pillows.

“It’s just that _I_ wanted to make you come,” he said petulantly.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said as she dropped the cuffs beside the bed and moved over to him on her knees. “You might as well be jealous of a dildo—no offense,” she added to the droid, patting his hip, feeling a bit bad about her off-hand figure of speech. He was not at all comparable to a dildo.

“None taken,” he mumbled sleepily.

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

“Or jealous of yourself, for that matter. Or of my fingers.” She held up the hand with which she’d been pleasuring herself moments before and wiggled her fingers.

He wrapped his hand around her wrist and drew her fingers closer to his face, running his nose lightly along the length of them, just brushing her skin as he took in her scent.

“I _am_ jealous of your fingers,” he said huskily. 

“Mhm.” Just his warm breath ghosting over her fingers and the tickling of his skin against hers—and those words in that voice— and already her breaths were becoming shallow and fast, regardless of how recently she’d come.  River reclaimed sovereignty of her hand and touched her first two fingertips to the Doctor’s bottom lip, drawing it down into even more of a pout so that her fingers rested on its wet interior.

The Doctor touched the tip of his tongue to the tips of her fingers and could just detect the barest taste of her arousal left there though the moisture itself had already dried.  A sensory impression of her clit silky slick beneath his own fingers hit him, and he tilted his head forward and closed his mouth over her fingers, circling his tongue around them, his awareness narrowed to the sensation of her wet-again fingers against his tongue, filling his mouth, and that of the resulting tightening rush in his already hard cock.

River shifted to bring her body against him. “Still want to make me come?”

“Mhm-mhm,” he affirmed as he sucked at her fingers, taking more of them in until he was nudging his tongue against the soft, sensitive skin between them, earning a throaty hum from River.

“Sure you don’t need to get back to your re-wiring?” She trailed her nails over his hip and down his thigh, shifting against him so her stomach lightly, deliciously brushed against the underside of his cock.

He inhaled sharply at that and then slid his lips deliberately up her fingers as he released them, touching the tip of his tongue to the ends of each one again before lifting his head. “Shut up.”

He leaned in and River met him, extending her tongue between their mouths so he could meet it with his.  He swept his tongue up the bottom of hers as he had done with her fingers, but oh, this was so much better—her soft tongue sliding wetly against his as it was now. Tangling his fingers into her curls, he pressed his open mouth to hers, wanting more, more, more, and River kissed him back just as wantonly, her damp fingers sliding up his neck into his hair, those of the other hand digging into his arse as a new burst of arousal surged deep between her legs.

The sound she made had his hips thrusting involuntarily, and he edged his lower body away from her in an attempt to keep a check on his rising arousal, to somehow limit the speed with which his need was building, and bent forward to nuzzle his lips and tongue along her jaw, up to her ear, dipping his tongue in, then down her neck, returning intermittently to her mouth for long kisses.

“I hate you,” River all but moaned the next time her mouth was free, as he licked along her collar bone and then sucked the delicate skin in the notch above it into his mouth.

“She doesn’t,” the droid said, and the Doctor lifted his eyes briefly to find his duplicate watching them lazily but avidly.  Hardly a surprise. Nor was the fresh erection he was sporting.

“Oh, I _know_ ,” the Doctor burred, pressing a kiss to River’s cheek, earning a throaty chuckle, before beginning to work his way down her chest with his mouth.

River’s hands were everywhere, stroking, teasing with her nails, grasping, and rubbing, and then one fingertip slid over the crease of his hip and she began to lightly stroke up the shaft of his cock with the back of one finger. Really, keeping any sort of check on his arousal when he was with River was a ridiculous idea and he resigned himself to being mad with need for her the entire time he was pleasuring her—he just _knew_ she was going to want his mouth between her legs after the way she’d responded to his mouth on her fingers and then licked at his tongue, knew from the way she kissed him now, every time he brought his mouth back up to hers, oh yes, he was soon going to have his face buried in her—and luxuriated in the feel of her teasing touch, giving in to the way she was making him harder and harder yet by the moment.

“I want to make you come with kisses,” he confessed as he moved his mouth from one breast to the other, his hands cradled against the outer swells of both, delighted with the curve of them against his palms. “Is that what you want?”

Knowing exactly what kind of kisses he meant, River felt a flutter of anticipation. “Yes,” she said. She wrapped her hand around him, squeezing lightly, and then began to slowly stroke him up and down.

The Doctor pressed needy open-mouthed kisses to her sternum. “You want me wild for you while I do it, don’t you?” he rumbled, thrusting into her hand, which she tightened in response.

“Oh yes,” she purred, sliding her thumb over the head of his cock and making him gasp.

 “Anything you’d like me to do?” the droid asked politely.

River hummed a laugh that was absolutely wicked, and the Doctor felt himself tighten yet again. Whatever thought she’d just had promised to be excruciatingly delicious.

In the end, he found himself with this face buried in her sex just as he’d craved while her hands did to the droid lying at her side what he longed for them to be doing to him.

Soon the sounds she was drawing from the droid had his eyes permanently cast up so he could watch every move of her clever hands, which were obviously made for her own satisfaction more than the droid’s.

A kind of mental handcuffs had clicked into place for the Doctor, in his mind and in the understanding between he and River, and while he was free to move as much as he liked, he had that same delicious feeling he had when physically restrained of being held in check, awaiting her whims, his entire existence centered on giving her pleasure, his own delayed in service to hers.

River Song mastered him without a touch or a word, let alone anything as blatant as the cuffs, and oh, how he loved it.

 


	3. Otters

“River! You’ve reprogrammed him again!”

“Just a little,” she said unrepentantly. Rather smugly, in fact.

“Stop doing that!”

“But why? He’s _my_ present. You gave him to me, Doctor. Shouldn’t I be able to do what I like with him?”

“But—but he’s _me_.  Or just like me, at least. Rather, he _was_ just like me, and you—you keep— _tweaking_ him.” He huffed. “Really, you’re going to give me a complex.”

She laughed. “Is there really room for a new one, do you think?”

“River! Rude!”

“Granted, you’ve quite a big head, b—”

“River!”

“You’re being ridiculous, Doctor. You don’t really think that a few _tweaks_ here and there to his programming _mean_ anything, do you?  Are you worried I’m going to like him more?” she finished teasingly, with an annoying amount of mocking amusement in her voice _and_ all over her face.

“It’s not nice to belittle your partner’s feelings, River,” he said primly, wagging his finger at her. “No matter how irrational, you should—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, have you been reading _manuals_ again?” She rolled her eyes. “At least this one sounds _slightly_ more modern than the last one—I still can’t imagine why you thought it was a good idea to follow a guide written for early twentieth-century housewives when everything in it was ridiculous advice for _them_ in the first place.”

“You liked the apron.”

“And the martini and the dinner you had waiting, but—

“And the wifely duties part.”

“Yes, all _right_ ,” she said brusquely and then immediately softened and stroked his chest fondly, momentarily derailed by the memories he’d evoked. “Yes, I quite liked how prettily you serviced your ‘lord and master,’” she purred, leaning in and pecking his lips, which clung lingeringly to hers as always. “But then you always satisfy my every desire, don’t you? The roleplay _was_ fun, though.” She kissed him again. “I do appreciate the thought, but you don’t need a manual, sweetie.”

“And yet you keep _tweaking_ him,” he said.

River sighed. “It doesn’t mean I want _you_ to be any different than you are.”

“Obviously it does.”

“It doesn’t!”

“How can it not?”

“Doctor!” She took a deep breath. “Look, if you’re this insecure about it, I’ll stop, all right? No more tweaks. Does that soothe your ridiculously fragile male ego sufficiently that we can carry on with our evening? I swear—1203 and still even more of a child than you look!”

“Well, if I’m such a child, why don’t you just go have dinner with your _boyfriend_ instead? He’s sure to be as manly as you could want because, if he’s not, you’ll just reprogram him!”

River made a sound of pure exasperation and flung up her hands. She leaned in until they were nose to nose. “You know what? I _will_. With my _husband._ ” Spinning on her heel, she grabbed the droid’s hand and pulled him up from his seat. He was wearing the tweed and entirely underdressed for the venue, but she couldn’t care less. “Come on, let’s go. Dinner and dancing and lots of grownup fun for us while him indoors pouts and nurses his ego, eh?”

The Doctor crossed his arms sulkily and leaned against the wall. “Well, I’m not going to hang around here while you two are on your little date, if that’s what you think. I’m going out without you,” he declared. “I’ll have an adventure on my own. One with _otters_. Otters, River, and you’re going to miss it.”

She paused in the bedroom doorway through which she’d just ushered the droid Doctor and lifted a brow. “Otters? You can keep them.” She slapped her vortex manipulator to her wrist and worked the buckle with brisk, angry jerks. “In fact, _they_ can keep _you_.” She looked up and gave him a glare. “You needn’t hurry home. I _won’t_ be waiting up.”

And with that, she snapped her head around and strode out.

-x-

He sulked among the otters for a month, imagining all the ways his wife was probably reprogramming her android _husband_ to be a more agreeable spouse than he was and all the dates and adventures she was probably having that should have been _his_ nights instead.

In the end, it was the sense of loss at the idea of missing any precious night with River that overcame his pride.

He went to the same night she’d stormed out of the TARDIS with the droid, parked the ole girl just where she’d been a moment and a month ago, and settled in to wait for River to return. He expected to have a long wait—considering her promise not to be waiting up, he didn’t think she’d make a short evening of it—but waiting for her was part of the apology, after all.

Then he realized he was an _idiot_ because River surely wouldn’t come back to where she’d left the TARDIS at the end of her evening.  Even if she might be inclined to, he’d as good as told her he wouldn’t be there, hadn’t he?

He trudged down to the bedroom awash in guilt. He’d put on his tux and then go out and find her.  Apologize.

River was curled on the bed reading a book.

The Doctor gaped and then tried to gather himself as she looked up at him. Because, he’d realized, this was a different River, of course.  One who’d already forgiven him or one who hadn’t yet stormed out on a date with the droid. Either way, his apologies would have to wait.

“Hi, honey,” he got out, and despite himself, he still sounded pathetically hangdog even to his own ears.

She closed her book and sat up. “Hello, sweetie,” she said and suddenly he knew from the sorrowful lilt of the words that it _was_ the same River, after all. Somehow.

Suddenly confronted with the opportunity to fix things after all, he swallowed and faltered a bit. “I was going to wait for you to come back. Then I realized I’d need to go and find you because why would you come back.” He crossed to the bed, hesitant because he wasn’t sure of his welcome, and sat on the end, looking up with his question in his eyes: Why _did_ you come back?

“I was waiting up for you,” she said softly.

He felt his eyes sting. “I hurried home.” He had. Eventually.

She held out a hand and he grasped it gratefully. “I’m sorry, River.”

“Me too.” She twined her fingers with his and squeezed his hand gently. “I _should_ have been more considerate of your feelings.”

“No, you were right. I was being silly. I built the android for you, and he’s yours, and you can do what you like with him. I won’t complain from now on.”

River looked up from where she had been watching her thumb rubbing over the back of his hand. “I shut him down.” She looked back at their hands.

“You—what? But why?” He tugged lightly on her hand to get her to look at him again.

She did, reaching her free hand up to his face and cradling it firmly as if to fully fix his attention on her, as if she needed to. “Because I don’t ever want you to think that there is anyone or anything in this universe that I love more or want more or that matters more to me than you.”

He was suddenly having a hard time not crying. “River, oh, River.” He pressed his hand over the one on his cheek and lifted the one he was holding to his mouth, kissing her fingers and then doing it again and again as he spoke. “I know that. I do. You almost destroyed the universe for me, you mad, impossible, amazing woman.” He turned his head to press his mouth against the palm of that hand as well. “I’m an idiot.”

“Maybe, but I love you exactly as you are,” she said insistently, moving her hand from his face to wrap her arm around him as she turned their joined hands to bring his palm to her mouth and kiss it as he had hers.

Each press of her lips clutched at his hearts. “And I love you—beyond all reason—until I’m stupid and foolish with it.”

She shifted and lay back on the bed, taking him with her and then taking hold of his hips and bringing him to settle in her arms, lying atop her.

“Then kiss me, you _fool_ ,” she said drolly, and he did, their mouths coming together languorously again and again.

Eventually, he nestled his arms along her sides and held the point of each of her shoulders in his hands, and she fit her bent legs snugly against his hips and thighs so that they cradled each other as the kissing went on and on.

“How is it that you were already here?” he asked sometime later, tracing his fingers over her cheek and chin. “I’d only just arrived back myself.”

“I didn’t wait for you to come back. I tracked down your otters of choice hours ago and I’ve been here since then. How long were you out there, anyway? You _smell_ like what I can only assume must be otter.”

He drew back and tugged up the lapel of his jacket to sniff at it.  River looped her arms around his back and tugged him back into place.

His eyes caught hers and then flickered away. “’Bout a month,” he mumbled.

“No! Seriously?”

He ducked his head until his forehead rested on her chin. “Maybe.”

“Are otters really that entertaining?” she asked in some surprise, shifting her head to bump her chin against his temple.

“Definitely not. Maybe a little, but not _that_ entertaining, no. I didn’t have any fun at all without you there. I spent the whole time missing you and wishing I hadn’t been so stupid.”

“I meant to come to you the same night,” River said regretfully. That tone in her voice was enough to break his hearts.

“Me too. In the end.” He _had_ wound up with River on the same night for her, at least, but . . . “ _I_ was going to wait for _you_.” He lowered his head and kissed her shoulder. “That’s how it should have been.”

River brought his head back up so she could reach his mouth. She had barely begun to kiss him again when he drew away. “Uh, you said I smelled.” He wrinkled his nose. “Like otters. I’ll just have a quick shower and be back in a mo.”

She wrapped her legs around him and pulled his mouth back toward hers.  “Later.”

“You _like_ the smell of otters?”

She laughed. “Hardly, dear. But I dislike it less than the idea of letting go of you right now.”

He rolled onto his back with River on top of him, the better to wrap his arms around her because he just had to hug her right then.

After a several more long moments of kissing, he said, “You can reactivate the android, you know.”

“And have you spending a month with beavers or something?” she said, grinning. “I don’t think so.”

“No, really. It’ll be fine. You know I—I mean—well, I like it, too, you know. Three of us.”

“Oh, I _do_ _know,_ ” she said teasingly. “But no more droids.”

When their mouths next parted, he said, “Well, I suppose it’s really not _that_ much of a risk to cross a timeline here and there.  Every now and again.”

Smirking, River said, “Hardly a risk at all, really.” She dipped her head and mouthed along his throat.

“Right. Ah, what are we going to do with the android, though?”  He tilted his head back as River worked her way down to his collar. As she nuzzled along it, he felt her fingers find his bow tie and tug it open.

“We’ll think of something,” she said absently, unbuttoning his collar so she could kiss the base of his throat.


	4. Epilogue

The Doctor and River stood side by side next to the console, staring at the deactivated android in front of them.

“We can’t _dismantle_ him,” the Doctor said.

“Certainly _not_ ,” River said, sounding appalled at the very idea. “There’s that android colony on Trebes IV in the 49th century,” she added after a bit.

The Doctor considered it, chewing his lip. Then he shook his head. “He’d pine for you.”

“ _Ohh_.” River slapped his arm.

“Sorry, dear, but it’s true.”

“We could reprogram him,” she suggested after a moment, during which he had watched her eyes go all soft and warm.

The Doctor turned and looked at the droid Doctor consideringly and then looked back at her. “I don’t think we _could_. Not that way. That much.”

River sighed and looped her arm through his as she leaned her head on his shoulder. “What are we going to do with him then? It doesn’t feel right to just leave him deactivated.”

“No.”  The Doctor tapped a finger against his lips. “We could make him his own wife,” he said eventually, “and take them both to the android colony.”

River lifted her head and stared at him. “What, like some sort of bride of Frankenstein? We just build him a copy of me?”

“Come now,” he said, sounding insulted. “He’s put together much better than that! Frankenstein, indeed. He’s no Frankenstein’s monster.”

“No, of course not, but . . .”

“Well, why not? It’s okay for an android me to roam about the universe but not an android River Song?”

“It’s not that. It just seems rather like compounding the problem. Come to think of it, I don’t much like the idea of _your_ face running around somewhere . . .” A sudden thought hit her. “My God. Another set of us running around. Do you think the universe could survive it?”

“Well, I dunno—might double its chances, really, if you think about it. We’ve saved the universe quite a few times, you know.”

“Yeees.  Rather more than a few.  On the _other_ hand . . .”

She trailed off and they looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing.*

There was a crackle of energy and a voice—the Doctor’s voice—cheerily asking, “What’s so funny?”

The Doctor and River turned to find themselves standing on the stairs.

The other Doctor turned to his River and patted the hand of the arm his was wrapped around.  A vortex manipulator was strapped around her wrist. “Precision landing, dear.”

“Thank you, sweetie,” she said smugly. “So nice of you to admit it—surprising, but nice.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to be here, though. Saving that for a surprise, were you?” He bopped her nose and grinned at her.

“I didn’t know, actually.”

 “Oh— _oh—_ but that means . . .” said the Doctor, turning to his River.

The droid caught River's eye and she clutched her Doctor’s arm happily. “Oh, _three_ of you? You’ve outdone yourself!” She gave the droid a second look and added, before the Doctor had the chance to reply, “Wait, that’s _not_ you. Explain.”

“Spoilers, I’m afraid. Pretend you didn’t see that.”

“Yes, a younger me. And yes, I knew they’d be showing up.” River twinkled up at him and then murmured, “She’s _quite_ young, actually, in a manner of speaking. It’s her birthday. It’s her first _that sort_ of birthday. How’s _that_ for a surprise?” she added, looking from the man at her side to the man on the stairs to include them both in the question.

“You never told me there were two of _you_ , too, the first time we did this,” both Doctors said at exactly the same time.

Both Rivers laughed identical laughs.

“Overlapping timelines got your memories?” said the older River to the Doctor on the stairs, a bit gleeful to realize he could still be surprised this night, while the younger one hugged his arm in delight.

“Ohh,” she said, “this _is_ going to be _fun_. Do they do everything simultaneously?” she asked her future self, eagerly pulling her Doctor down the stairs with her toward their counterparts.

“Now, that _would_ be spoilers, wouldn’t it?” the older River trilled.

“Didn’t realize you’d still have him around,” the older Doctor remarked, chucking a thumb at the droid. “Thought we were comin’ later than that.”

River and River exchanged amused glances at their husband’s eternal bumbling of coordinates.

“So, we do get rid of him?” the younger Doctor asked unthinkingly. He pointed with both hands at his future self. “Went with the wife thing, yeah?”

The older Doctor mimed zipping his lips and throwing away a key, his eyes twinkling. “Spoilers,” he said.

“Funny,” River said musingly under her breath, “but I’d forgotten all about this particular bit of the night. About him.” She nodded at the android.

Both Doctors tucked their thumbs under their lapels with matching proud smirks.

“Oh, stop it,” she said fondly. “You don’t get to preen about how good you were in advance.”

“Don’t see why not,” said the elder Doctor.

“When it’s so obvious that we will be _very_ good,” finished the younger, winking over at the younger River.

“Shut up,” she said happily.

“Make us,” the Doctors said in unison and both Rivers laughed and then exchanged looks.

“Shall we?” said the elder River to the younger.

“You don’t even need to ask.”

“For more reasons than one.” River took her younger self’s arm and walked with her toward the stairs, the Doctors hastening to follow. “Come along, Doctors.”

“The TARDIS is canceling out the time differential, right?” the younger one said, running her hand along her older self’s arm and noting how sparks did not fly.

“Of course,” River told her. “You knew she would.”

The Doctors beamed identical besotted smiles at each other, happy to be sharing their wonder at their wife with someone who entirely understood it from the inside out, and skipped the next stair to reach her side—both hers’ sides—and slip an arm around her waist.

The four of them continued up the stairs arm and arm, and the younger Doctor reached around the River beside him and mischievously patted the younger one’s arse.

She made a surprised peep of a sound that was entirely unlike her at the unexpected touch and both Doctors laughed in delight.

“Get used to it,” whispered the elder River. “They’re going to make four hands seem like six.”

“I heard that,” said the younger Doctor.

“So did I,” added the elder. “Don’t spoil yourself,” he admonished teasingly. “Or younger me.”

“It wasn’t a spoiler, honey,” she retorted. “It was a challenge.”

“Well, then.”

“In that case . . .”

“This is going to be really, _really_ good, isn’t it?” said the younger River.

“Oh, even _better_ than you’ve imagined.”

“Really? Even better than that one fantasy where—”

“Even that one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Just in case you were left wondering what had River and the Doctor cracking up after he pointed out that another Doctor and another River might double the universes's chances since they'd saved the universe quite a few times, it was the shared thought that, some of those times, they had been what endangered it in the first place.


End file.
